Tracking back on the Requiem

Anita blogged my rambling rant about Mozart’s Requiem. Her comments page has good feedback–particularly comment #3 which correctly calls me on my imprecise musical history. No one is really sure why Süssmayer or Mozart chose to end the final movement with the opening angry Requiem theme, and there is a lot of history between Mozart and Fauré. But at the end of the day, all we are left with is the final artifact. And I still argue that the outraged emotion of Mozart is a more adequate response to the World Trade Center attack than Fauré’s peacefulness–at least from where we sit today, one year on.
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The fabulous sound of wax

I finally got my record player hooked into my stereo. This is a bigger deal than it might seem: my record player and all my records were in a garage in New Jersey from April 2001 to June 2002, then in a moving truck going across country in early July, then in our garage until yesterday. Plus I had to add an adapter and another cable to reach from where I had to put the record player (too far for the attached cable to reach). But it sounds great. I played my vinyl copy of The Joshua Tree… which I got in 2000.

Bumbershoot Part II: Sonic Youth

I arrived outside Seattle Center and found a parking space less than two blocks from the gate. Then I got in line to go into the gate and saw the line going the other way into the stadium. The line kept going and going. In fact, it stretched all the way across the Seattle Center grounds. I had been looking forward to catching another act before I went into the stadium, but I grit my teeth and hopped in line. Fortunately, it moved along pretty quickly and before long I was inside listening to Modest Mouse. I’m not really a fan, but I noted that their singer seemed to be trying to do a Jim Morrison with a little bit of his baritone yelp, that is when he was singing instead of yelling.

When all the Modest Mouse fans started leaving the stadium, I made my move–all the way up front to within about 15 feet of the security guards in front. Reached in my pocket for my earplugs–oops, still at home. Hoped that the sound system wasn’t as deafening as it was at the 9:30 Club, where I had last seen Sonic Youth in 1998–before all their gear got stolen, before Jim O’Rourke joined, before they released the mostly throwaway NYC Ghosts & Flowers and the brilliant Murray Street.

A commotion. Lee Ranaldo had hopped on stage to check some of the gear. We yelled, “Lee!” He turned around and grinned as he headed back offstage. A few minutes later, the band came out and plugged in. Thurston started with a few chords. “Kotton Krown.” Then “The Empty Page.” Then “Drunken Butterfly.” People started really getting into this one–crowd was moshing and some people started crowd surfing. But the energy was really good. Amazing, in fact. Then someone cut in front of me and just stood there. But the nice geek next to me (with whom I had discussed SourceForge prior to the show) and his girlfriend (who looked uncannily like Rory Gilmore) helped me get rid of him.

More incredible music. I don’t remember the order, but “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style,” “Candle,” “Sympathy for the Strawberry” (Lee played keyboards and broke two guitar strings!), “Rain on Tin” (Jim O’Rourke got to do some amazing feedback), “Plastic Sun.” A few I’ve forgotten. Then Kim stepped up to the mic as Thurston hit “Kool Thing.” I thought the crowd had been going before, but I was wrong, wrong. The song didn’t miss Chuck D, and it had a nice moment where Kim said, “You gonna free us girls from male, white, corporate oppression? … We have this friend. She had to take most of her clothes off to sell records, her label said. Then the label said, ‘Mariah? You’re half naked, you need a makeover!’”

The band went offstage, then came back on and played “Disconnection Notice.” After the rest of the set, it felt somber and almost valedictory. This was the last set of their tour. Wind came up into Lee’s hair. They left the stage. I left the stadium and drove home.

Bumbershoot Part I

Written Saturday 31 Aug: Just got back from our first day at Bumbershoot. Mental note: look at the map first next time. We parked on the wrong side of the Seattle Center for the Will Call desk, and that’s a long walk.

Despite which it was really pleasant. Walked around in the sun, watched a goofy circus, heard a lot of percussionists, laughed at kids trying out hula hoops for the first time, watched the last two songs of Johnny Lang and the first three of Ani DiFranco.

Watching Ani: the first two songs sounded pretty much alike: spoken lyrics, sung chorus, spiky guitar accompaniment. The third one got lyrical. She introduced it as a “long rambling folk song.” As she played I watched a blind woman being led down the sidelines of the stadium field by an usher; her cane steadily slid ahead of her, bobbing from side to side, as Ani played.

Tomorrow, Sonic Youth. Tonight, collapse.
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Branford starts a label

From my old stomping grounds: Marsalis Music opens its doors. What’s interesting is that Branford explicitly bitchslaps the record labels in the press release:

“The consolidation of the record industry into major conglomerates has turned the business into a mega-hit pop music machine with a very short term focus. Artists who want to be musicians, not marketing creations, have very few places to record anymore,” Branford notes. “We formed Marsalis music to provide a real alternative. This is a very exciting time and I am thrilled to be doing this.”

This probably explains why “Footsteps of Our Fathers” was in pre-release so long…
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Too Southern for Atlanta?

Latest radio asinine moment: Country DJ fired for sounding too Southern — in Atlanta! Greg nails this one:

Like much of the rest of the industry country music has taken a nosedive — but that has nothing to do, so we’re told, with playlists programmed by committee, managers so out of touch that a quintuple-platinum Grammy-winning sleeper hit still can’t get airplay, or artists that aim to sound less like Johnny Cash than Rick Dees. Nope, the problem is that the DJ — on a country station — in Dixie! — sounds too Southern.

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